Friday, November 25, 2016

PBUS recently posted a letter to the editor from a retired judge with the caption, "When your life experience includes decades as a judge, court administrator, and lawyer, you understand the purpose of secured bail."

I read that letter and realized, once again, why we need certain judges simply to retire to get bail reform done in America. In fact, the only thing clear from this judge's letter (and his vast experience) is that he participated fully in the very thing America so desperately wants to reform today. He was part of the problem. Maybe even a big part, which is probably why he felt the need to justify his many years of accepting money bail in a letter.

I know a lot of other judges, judges like Eric Washington, Charles Daniels, Truman Morrison, Scott Bales, and many more, who quickly spotted the inherent unfairness in the money bail system. They are helping to lead this generation of reform, and, in the end, they will create a safe, fair, and effective pretrial justice system in America.

This quote is probably wrong, but I think Alan Dershowitz once said that often a person's 20 years of experience involves one year of doing it wrong, and nineteen years of repeating the mistakes.

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

If I were a lobbyist for the
insurance companies, I’d do exactly what ABC is doing. I’d fight everything, because
every alternative but the status quo means the insurance companies lose money.
If I were the lobbyist for the bail agents, though, I’d be helping them say to
various officials, “Hey, we helped America with pretrial release back in the late
1800s, and we can help now. It may mean that we have to change a few things,
but we’re willing to do it.”

If you keep arguing to keep
the status quo, pretty soon people will shine a light on it, and you’ll end up
with a story like this. And, frankly, there’s a bad news story like this waiting to be
told in every state. It’s just a matter of looking for it.

You’re watching your
businesses die, but it’s only because the people running the overall strategy
are insurance companies and short-sighted bail bond companies like the one in
the article.

Thursday, November 3, 2016

If, in fact, ABC has its inaugural
affiliate conference this month, it will undoubtedly trumpet its memo on
California law, its white paper on Maryland law, and its ghostwritten memo signed
by one very lonely Illinois judge. I doubt, however, that ABC will mention the
Chief Justice of California’s proposed study on money bail, a similar white
paper written by Eric Holder about Maryland, or my memo countering that very
lonely Illinois judge. This merely follows what ABC has done in the past, which
is to conveniently only mention the very few things it thinks are a success and
leave everything else out.

Those successes, though, are
very few indeed, and yet the massive effort to achieve them is basically being
paid by you bail agents. The new tactic over at ABC appears to be enlisting the
help of other lobbyists around the country to essentially argue the status quo –
you know, those “fight everything” arguments that have gotten you so far.
But, you know, someone has to pay for them, and I believe that would be you,
bail agents. On the other hand, a lot of people working on reforming the status
quo are doing it for free. I know I
wrote my piece for free, I’m pretty sure Eric Holder didn’t charge anyone for
his most recent memo, and the Chief Justice of California isn’t likely to take
a bit of money to argue anyone’s position, either. Let’s face it – it’s like a
bunch of mercenaries fighting against people who think it’s a holy war. Who do
you think will win?

So you’re paying for
everything that ABC is doing, but it’s only telling you about a piece of what’s
happening out there. Moreover, ABC has absolutely
no intention of pulling back this fight to actually help jurisdictions figure
out how to include private supervision into the mix. That’s because private supervision,
just like public supervision, means the bail insurance companies will be out of
the picture.

So if, in fact, ABC has its conference (can you tell I
think it won’t happen, or if it does, it will mostly be attended only by
insurance dudes?), you should ask them how hiring more people simply to make the
same faulty arguments is going to stem the tide of reform.

About Me

Hello everyone! I'm a criminal justice system analyst with 25 years of legal experience. I was editor-in-chief of the law journal in law school, and I worked as a law clerk to a federal appellate judge right after graduation. I then worked in private practice for several years in Washington DC before I came back to Colorado, where I became interested in criminal justice. I worked for both the state and federal courts of appeals as a staff attorney doing criminal appeals, and I also taught at Washburn Law School for a year before I got involved in the local criminal justice system issues in Jefferson County, Colorado. In that job I quickly realized that there was a lot of room for criminal justice reform, and that's what I've been doing ever since.

For the past several years I've been working on reforming America's traditional system of administering bail. Believe me, it really needs it. I started this blog because I was getting somewhat fed up with all of the slanted misinformation and self-serving research and analyses circulated in the field. This is my little way of chiming in.

I think I've had plenty of formal education, and I hope I'm not forced to get any more (although I'm taking two classes on Coursera!). I have a law degree, a masters of law degree, and a masters of criminal justice degree in addition to the two degrees that I got in college.

I am currently the Executive Director of a Colorado nonprofit called the Center for Legal and Evidence-Based Practices. It serves as my platform for performing neutral and objective research and analysis of topics relating to bail and pretrial justice. I hope that you'll get something out of this blog, which will undoubtedly contain a few things you aren't likely to find anywhere else.